Ranking the Episodes of Season One

It's been nearly a quarter century since I last watched The Next Generation, a show that was my favorite in my youth. I am working my way through the seven seasons now, and I am finding that TNG is pretty much as I remembered.

The good news is that TNG gets the worst out of the way in season one. The bad news is that season one is a bit of a slog, with a handful of highlights here and there. In ascending order:

The Ugly:
Angel One
Naked Now
Code of Honor

The Bad:
Haven
Hide and Q
Symbiosis
Justice
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Encounter at Farpoint

The Mediocre:
Skin of Evil
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
The Battle
We'll Always Have Paris
The Big Goodbye
Heart of Glory
The Neutral Zone

The Decent:
The Arsenal of Freedom
Where No One Has Gone Before
Home Soil
Coming of Age
11001001
Datalore

The Good:
Conspiracy

Season One

 

The Bad:
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Home Soil

The Mediocre:
Encounter At Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
Hide and Q
Angel One
Coming Of Age
We'll Always Have Paris

The Good:
Where No One Has Gone Before
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Too Short A Season
When The Bough Breaks
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
The Neutral Zone

Classic:
11001001
Heart of Glory
Conspiracy


Most of the episodes I labeled mediocre are entertaining so when you add it up, only 5 or 6 episodes deserve to be beamed off and sent to the scrap heap. I love season one.

 

"Where No One Has Gone Before" is my favourite TNG episode of all time. I've just always been fascinated by them being 2 galaxies away. I really wish we could've seen a bit more of that galaxy... oh well, that's what my imagination is for! Also, I think Geordi says it will take them "over 300 years to get home" when they'd traveled over 2 billion LY... I mean, I guess he's not wrong, but it is more like over 2,000 years (based on VOY's travel of 1,000 LY per year, roughly). And then at the end of the episode, he claims his instruments never recorded the ship going past Warp 1.5 (something like that) when he clearly states "we're passing Warp 10" earlier in the episode, unless he was just assuming. What a goof; he was better in the engine room.

 

I always enjoyed the pilot and The Naked Now as guilty pleasures. Code of Honor and Justice are atrocious. By the way, I apologize if I'm breaking a rule here, but amazon is giving away four copies of my book about TNG, and I'd like them to go to TNG fans. You have to be from the U.S, but if you are, and you're one of the first four to claim a book, it's yours for free: https://www.amazon.com/ga/p/f83fc595cba74de2

 

The Naked Now is very much a guilty pleasure of mine. I totally understand all the bad press it gets, but I also just really dig the whole cheesy-1980s-sex-comedy aspect, there's something hilarious about that episode that really IMHO proves wrong the criticism that TNG was too po-faced and 'serious'.

 

I liked how it was a very early link connecting TOS to TNG. (I think I like The Naked Time better, though.) Also, The Naked Now gets bonus points for being referenced in First Contact (film).

 

One thing I love about that is that in isolation the episode might have been written off and forgotten, but the producers kept referencing it. Data keeps a hologram of Tasha and episodes like "Measure of a Man" and "Legacy", as well as the movie First Contact, keep touch with their little liason.

 

I wish they had done more sequels to TOS episodes. However, I understand why they wouldn't want to do that.

I love season one. It's weird and wonky as they try to figure out where they want to go with the show and the personalities. I recently watched Angel One after not having seen it for many years and it was better than my memory of it.

The clunkers for me are..
Lonely Among Us
The Battle (didn't care for the Bok episodes)
Code of Honor
Datalore
Heart of Glory
Hide and Q

The rest range from meh to favorites
The Last Outpost - Like
Justice - GP (guilty pleasure)
Home Soil - Favorite
Encounter At Farpoint - Like (it's grown on me over the years)
The Naked Now - I like the TOS link but the episode is fairly meh
Angel One - Not as bad as I remember it but not great
Coming Of Age - Like
We'll Always Have Paris - Favorite
Where No One Has Gone Before - Like
Haven - meh
The Big Goodbye - Like
Too Short A Season - Like
When The Bough Breaks - Like
The Arsenal of Freedom - Kinda goofy but a guilty pleasure
Symbiosis - Like
Skin of Evil - Favorite
The Neutral Zone - Favorite
11001001 - Like
Conspiracy - Favorite

 

Looks like we've got some season one defenders. Maybe season one is sort of an in-club thing. It's for the real devotees of Star Trek and TNG in particular. It's got a bad reputation among wider audiences.

 

Season one has a fair share of entertaining "bad" episodes, like Code of Honor and Hide and Q, while the later seasons suffer from a few competent-but-dull episodes like The Ensigns of Command.

 

They don't matter though

 

That's a good point. Some of the later season episodes seem like they were trying to create good/great drama but ended up being snoozefests. They also wanted to do more character pieces instead of being what they were, which was a science fiction show. Season One still has that sense of wonder about it that tended to get a little lost in later seasons.

 

I will echo the sentiment that a lot of TNG S1's charm stems from it being clunkier and less-polished than Trek that came after. As such, it is actually a great transition from the '60s-era Trek, IMO.

 

I'll take entertaining camp over respectable-but-dull anyday.

 

LOL. Interesting ideas. I've never really been into the so-bad-it's-good stuff. But to each his own.

Ensigns of Command would have been better if the guest actors were better. They were almost mind-bogglingly awful. I suspect they were friends of the producers and had been nagging for a while to get on the show, or something like that.

 

^The Ensigns of Command comes to mind when I think of competent-but-dull because there is nothing really wrong or embarassing about the script or story, yet as a whole, the episode isn't very satisfying. I enjoyed the Sheliak but the colonist stuff is boring and flat, and I agree that the acting sinks it. I read that the original script had more romance between Data and Ardrian, and that Roddenberry wanted Data to be "fully functional".

 

That's just about exactly what I said in the video review.

It's strange to consider that The Next Generation had guest stars as excellent as, say, Suzie Plakson and then the ones from Ensigns of Command. That's quite a disparity.

 

Absolutely. The later seasons were more consistent, but took way less risks. The first few seasons felt truly dynamic.

 

I liked the story at the time but, yeah, I do recall the acting as being stagey at times.

And Roddenberry wanting Data to be a virtual Riker?!

 

^So in the original script Melinda Snodgrass wrote more scenes where Data got physical with Ardrian because logically he saw that this would comfort her when she was upset. Apparently Brent Spiner objected. He complained to Gene Rodenberry that the script made him too emotional, the script was rewritten, and Michael Wagner quit over the forced rewrite. This is in jwb's book, which was promptly delivered as promised.